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Basking

This Shimmering Oasis

May 27, 2025 101 Comments

Patrons are reminded that where you are right now is made possible by the kindness of strangers. If you’d like to ensure this place exists a while longer, and remains ad-free, there are three buttons below the fold with which to monetise any love. Debit and credit cards are accepted. If what happens here is of value, this is a chance to show it.

If one-click haste is called for, there’s a QR code in the sidebar, at which you point your phone, and my PayPal.Me page can be found here. As requested, there are SubscribeStar and Ko-Fi accounts, via which love may also be monetised, whether as one-off donations or monthly subscriptions. Should you be gripped by an urge to express encouragement via currency, by all means succumb.

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For newcomers wishing to know more about what’s been going on here for the last eighteen years, in over 3,000 posts and 200,000 comments, the Reheated series is a pretty good place to start – in particular, the end-of-year summaries, which convey the fullest flavour of what it is we do. A sort of blog concentrate. If you like what you find there… well, there’s lots more of that.

Do take a moment to poke through the discussion threads too. The posts are intended as starting points, not full stops, and the comments are where much of the good stuff is waiting to be found. And do please join in.

As always, thanks for the support, the comments, and the company.

Oh, and consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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Written by: David
Politics Those Poor Darling Burglars

Have You Tried Storing Them Upright?

May 25, 2025 93 Comments

From the Telegraph, on crime, incarceration, and dubious conclusions:

Up to 43,000 criminals are set to avoid prison each year under Government plans to combat jail overcrowding, an analysis of official figures by the Telegraph reveals. The criminals, including burglars, shoplifters and knife offenders, will instead face community sentences under the plans to scrap most jail terms of under 12 months.

The law change, recommended by an independent review headed by David Gauke, the former Tory justice secretary, will order courts to only jail offenders for less than a year in “exceptional circumstances,” including domestic abuse, stalking, and breaching orders linked to violence against women and girls.

The analysis also reveals that up to 1,500 killers, rapists and other serious sexual and violent offenders will be eligible for early release each year under the shake-up, which is designed to free up nearly 10,000 prison spaces.

Readers will note the odd implication that the level of serious criminal behaviour at any given time should somehow conform to the amount of prison space you have at that time. As if the moral gravity of a criminal act, and likelihood of recidivism and danger to the public, should be determined by whether or not you can be bothered to build another dungeon.

Speaking of recidivism, it’s perhaps worth revisiting this:

UK data show that 70% of custodial sentences are imposed on those with at least seven previous convictions or cautions, and 50% are imposed on those with at least 15 previous convictions or cautions.

Other, related statistics, linked above, may widen the eyes.

Update via the comments:

Regarding burglary and its devotees, this came to mind:

For readers curious as to exactly how much misery, fear, and social degradation a very small number of burglars can inflict on the world, on the better people around them, this item here may prove illuminating. In it, three prolific burglars, who between them had accumulated over 200 convictions, met their not-entirely-tragic end after colliding head-on with a lorry, while driving down the motorway at more than twice the speed limit, in the wrong direction, in a stolen BMW. Their fiery ceasing-to-be resulting in a rather significant drop in the local burglary rate.

An illustration, one of many, of how a very large fraction of crime could be prevented by dealing decisively with a surprisingly small number of persistent offenders.

Needless to say, there’s more to chew on in the linked piece. Likewise here, where friends and relatives of the three burglars – the ones with over 200 convictions between them – claim, somewhat improbably, that the deceased were “too good for this stupid, shitty world.” As if the trio – whose other activities included assaulting and mugging elderly couples and bedridden cancer patients – were, unlike their numerous victims, somehow deserving of public sympathy.

And which, I suspect, tells us something about the quality of those friends and relatives, their moral orientation.

In the comments, Geoff quotes this from the recidivism link, above:

before ending up in prison, the vast majority of the perpetrators, our supposed victims, have at least five prior arrests, with almost half having 10 or more, and one in seven, 20 or more.

Then adds,

I don’t think people understand it takes a lot of work to end up in prison.

Well, indeed.

Via Tim Worstall.

Previously in the world of crime and punishment, a trilogy of sorts – parts one, two, and three.

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Written by: David
Ephemera

Friday Ephemera (769)

May 23, 2025 173 Comments

Hippo expresses displeasure. || For the hungry among you. || So how was your day? || It was, alas, a very long drive. || Logo outrage. || An athletic use of the buttocks. || Obstruction of note. || Today’s word is ambitious. || FBI artefacts. || “It seems like here in Portland there is this super-big need for spiritual care.” || Meet the Bin Men, 1976. || Artful bouncing. || The thrill of martial arts. || She feels that a lot of assumptions are being made about her. || Choices were made. || You may gasp when ready. || We have ignition. || Wanted woman. || What the hell are people doing? A planet-wide statistical extrapolation. || Towing is hard. || A noteworthy indifference. || Incoming. || Niche skills. || New speech rules update issued. || Luminous. || A little steep, I grant you, but on the upside it is organic.

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Written by: David
Reheated

Reheated (106)

May 22, 2025 49 Comments

For newcomers, some items from the archives:

For Buoyancy, Perhaps.

An encounter with the incongruous.

You see, when you’re about to get undressed in a women’s changing room and you realise you’re being watched by a balding pervert in an overtly sexual micro-thong, and with fake rubber knockers attached to his person, this is just part and parcel of being sensitive and inclusive. Apparently, we must learn to embrace modernity and its many sophistications. Especially the ladies.

Don’t Look Directly At It.

The Progressive Retail Experience. And the contortions it requires.

During the lengthy interview quoted above, Walgreens CEO Tim Wentworth hints at the development of “creative” solutions for customers demoralised by unimpeded thieving and the subsequent lockdown status of many stores. Paying customers, a seemingly shrinking demographic, will, we’re assured, be offered a “better… in-store experience” via “new scheduling optimisation logic” and “leveraging our omnichannel capabilities.”

Oddly, Mr Wentworth, whose business is planning to close another 450 stores during the coming year, avoids any use of the words shoplifting, looting, or theft.

It has to be said, the prospect of shopping for shampoo in a store where pretty much everything, including shampoo, is under lock and key and requires elaborate and protracted negotiation in order to actually buy it, and in which looters might at any time appear and start smashing up the place, with little opposition, does not entice. But hey, maybe that’s just me.

Steal From Them, Not Me.

A stolen phone, a worldview in snapshot form.

You see, they’re only supposed to steal from “rich scum.” Not nice people. Say, nice progressive women who are, like, totally cool with the robbing of others.

I Know, Let’s All Film Our Mental Breakdowns.

An election occurs. Cue meltdowns and moon-howling.

Among those traumatised was the Guardian contributor Francine Prose, whose mental health took a catastrophic turn, complete with hair loss and sudden-onset eye-twitching. Symptoms that were accompanied by agitated ramblings about Hitler, Stalin, dictatorship, people thrown from helicopters, and “the imprisonment and execution of those who disagree.”

Of course, Ms Prose was far from alone in her weird theatre of distress, and social media was ablaze with performative convulsion. Among the titans of the fabulist resistance was a tightly wound progressive chap, who envisioned internment camps for those like himself, i.e., tightly wound progressives, with the streets being patrolled by some Trumpian Sturmabteilung.

Oh, and let’s not forget the Ohio high-school teacher Danielle Mann, whose post-election demands, issued from her classroom, included a list of the addresses of likeminded progressives, all of them, everywhere, and the mandatory wearing of identifying bracelets. So that she would know how everyone else voted.

Display Purposes.

Progressive parenting, with bonus crack and badger.

Come to think of it, I’m not entirely sure what loving one’s body might mean, beyond the obvious off-colour jokes. But apparently, it’s something that one is supposed to proclaim as an accomplishment, a credential of progressivism. I have, however, noted that it tends to be announced by people whose declared triumph in this matter is not altogether convincing, and whose basis for doing so is generally much slimmer than they are.

It must be quite strange to go through life feeling a need to boast in print of some pointed behaviour – specifically, “showing my sons what a real woman’s body… looks like” – as if this feat of not wearing knickers were somehow radical, empowering, and a basis for applause. And to then have to justify this lifestyle affectation in ways that are somewhat contradictory and not particularly convincing. As if no-one would notice. It seems a lot of effort.

For those craving more, this is a pretty good place to start.

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Written by: David
Academia Free-For-All Tree Licking

Peer-Reviewed, You Say

May 20, 2025 117 Comments

And in whatever-the-hell-this-is news:

[The authors] argue that imagining the Earth as a butch dyke lover enables a radically embodied and joyous mode of environmentalist politics…

Because environmentalist politics is all about the joy.

Stephens and Sprinkle situate their bodies in continuity with the Earth in a relationship of queer interdependency… They envision Butch Earth as a switch who invites us into a multitude of embodied, sensual, mindful responses beyond the limits of self-other paradigms.

Ah, those self-other paradigms. And situated bodies. Of course.

[The authors] propose an ethical practice of co-sense, rather than consent, in which humans attune themselves to the Earth via the senses, a process enabled by repeated, communal, non-monogamous marriages to the planet… in a relationship grounded by love and sensuality.

Naturally, the planet is also assigned with novelty pronouns – BE/BER – because, well, because.

Such is the radical heft of the Journal of Lesbian Studies. Where other topics of deep pondering include “lesbian-dog relationalities and becomings,” and “lesbian, non-binary, and trans-dog intimacies.”

Empowered feminist ladies and their erotic entanglements with pets is, you’ll recall, a subject we’ve touched on before.

The latest issue of the Journal of Lesbian Studies can be accessed, for a whole thirty days, for a mere £220.

Oh, and should you be intrigued by “ecosexuality,” “grassilingus,” tree-licking, and free-swinging breasts daubed with mud, well, today’s your lucky day.

Consider this an open thread. Share ye links and bicker.

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Written by: David
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In which we marvel at the mental contortions of our self-imagined betters.